How Chuck Berry Became a Rock ’n’ Roll Mastermind

The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news.

The babies born after World War II were turning into teenagers, and they craved entertainment. “You had this bumper crop, this demographic wave, and they needed something to do and something to listen to — and you could sell them stuff,” explains The New York Times chief pop music critic, Jon Pareles, on the new Popcast. “It was an affluent time. There was leisure time for cars and girls, which is what Chuck Berry, in his genius, calculated and sang about.”

“He made this synthesis that in retrospect seems absolutely natural,” Mr. Pareles said. “Somebody had to come up with it and he was the guy who did.”

On this week’s Popcast, Mr. Caramanica and Mr. Pareles discuss how Mr. Berry’s songwriting and performance style developed, and they listen to a handful of his lesser-known songs. (You’ve likely heard “Johnny B. Goode” a lot in the past few days; you won’t hear it here.) While the formula Mr. Berry developed was “calculated,” the songs are also “wild,” Mr. Pareles notes. “There’s a recklessness in them you still hear in them now.”

Along with his contemporaries — Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins — Mr. Berry helped create “an American music that was polyracial,” Mr. Pareles said. “But let it be said, Chuck Berry was writing these things and Elvis Presley was not. Chuck Berry was the mastermind. Elvis Presley was the voice and the costumes and the moves, but Chuck Berry was the grand master.”

Mr. Berry’s career, however, was not without interruption. After he served time in jail, he returned to a changed musical landscape. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles had covered his songs while he was away, and he was losing ground to himself. As Mr. Pareles explained, “The persistent story of pop is the whitefacing of black music.”

But Mr. Berry will always be remembered as rock’s first storyteller: “That’s one thing that he really brought to rock in its early days,” Mr. Pareles said. “He can tell you a story in like, three images and a joke. And it’s a great story.”

Email your questions, thoughts and ideas about what’s happening in pop music to popcast@nytimes.com.